Tastes like home.
Rigatoni alla zozzona… a joyful collision of the great Roman pastas – cacio e pepe, amatriciana, carbonara and gricia – with a cameo from a sausage. I love that it isn’t famous. It doesn’t perform. It’s quietly happy to satisfy.
Elizathen Hewson says…
I started making pasta every Saturday night as a way to steady myself. It was as much therapy as it was dinner, driven by a need to quieten the roaring rapids of anxiety in my head. This resulted in a project of self-care fuelled by pasta, Louis Armstrong and showerings of parmigiano reggiano – food as much for the soul as the stomach.
Every book I’ve written reflects the season of life I’m in. Once, Saturdays were about slow afternoons rolling fresh pasta. Now, they’re dictated by little people and their needs. The season I’m in is tired, hungry and stretched thin. Home Food is a true reflection of that. It’s food that gets us through – meals that feed our families, our moods and our need for something steady in the chaos.
This pasta dish feels like a coming together of my pasta life – from kneading dough for calm, to where I stand now. It’s not a trending dish, nor is it perfect. It’s messy, satisfying and comforting (what home food should be!). Its name literally translates to “a dirty mess”, which feels particularly fitting for life right now: raising two small children, running a business, keeping a marriage happy, checking in on my parents and friends, and still trying to look after myself. Life is messy. Things rarely go to plan. I like food that fits into that truth.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Roman pasta (I lived in Italy for a year in my late twenties), but it was only recently, during a conversation with a waiter in Rome, that I discovered rigatoni alla zozzona. He described it as a joyful collision of the great Roman pastas – cacio e pepe, amatriciana, carbonara and gricia – with a cameo from a sausage. I love that it isn’t famous. It doesn’t perform. It’s quietly happy to satisfy.
We eat this dish together, messy and generous, with everyone covered in sauce by the end. It reminds me that home isn’t about perfection – it’s about showing up, sitting down and celebrating the beautiful mess.
Ingredients
Serves 2-3
1 tablespoon olive oil
60–70g guanciale or pancetta, cut into lardons (or batons)
150g (about 2) pork and fennel sausages
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 × 400g can whole tomatoes
½ teaspoon salt
¼–½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
dried chilli flakes (optional)
200–250g short dried pasta such as paccheri, rigatoni mezzi or rigatoni
2 egg yolks
25g (¼ cup) grated pecorino (preferably, but parmesan will work too), to taste
Method
Place a large, deep frying pan over medium–low heat. Add the olive oil and guanciale and fry slowly until golden and crisp, about 8–10 minutes. Scoop out with a slotted spoon and set aside. Pour the rendered fat into a small bowl, leaving about 1 tablespoon in the pan.
Increase the heat to medium. Squeeze the sausage out of its casing into little nuggets, no larger than 1cm. Fry, undisturbed, for 1 minute, then fry the other side for another minute until they’re nicely golden. Add the garlic and tomato paste and cook for about 1 minute, then add the tomatoes, breaking them up with the back of a spoon. Season with salt, pepper and dried chilli, if using. Reduce the heat and let the sauce gently simmer, stirring occasionally, until it thickens slightly – around 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a rapid boil. Cook the pasta until it’s well shy of al dente – about 3 minutes less than the packet instructions. The plan is to finish cooking it in the sauce.
In a small bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, pecorino and 1 tablespoon of the reserved guanciale fat (discarding the rest).
Drain the pasta, reserving 1 cup of the cooking water. Add ½ cup of the cooking water to the pan and toss the pasta through the sauce. Cook over medium–high heat for about 1–2 minutes, adding a ¼ cup more cooking water as needed to keep the sauce loose.
Stir the final ¼ cup of cooking water into the egg yolk mixture. Remove the pan from the heat. Add the cooked guanciale and the egg yolk mixture to the pasta, tossing rapidly to combine. Stir until the pasta is glossy – about 30 seconds. Serve immediately.
HOME FOOD BY ELIZABETH HEWSON IS OUT NOW.
Published in ed#756
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